The 13,750-square foot SoMa parcel upon which McDonald’s sits on the southeast corner of Third and Townsend is on the market and being shopped. McDonald’s lease expires in January of 2017.

Zoned for development up to 105-feet in height, the 701 Third Street site is designated “Mixed Use-Office,” which allows for office, housing and retail use, as well as hotel, light industrial and arts activities, but not adult entertainment or heavy industrial.

Comments from “Plugged-In” Readers

Which gets me thinking of the large McDonald’s sites on Golden Gate and Van Ness, and Golden Gate and Fillmore. Oops and my favorite pet peeve, the one facing GGP on Stanyan.
All in time.
(but not soon enough.)

Zig: The Haight St site is nearly 38,000SF, while the Van Ness site is smaller at 13,000SF.
In 1997/98 the Van Ness site filed for permits to build a 144-unit senior housing building. Obviously nothing was ever done with that.

I would love to see a food forest here, for the new residents of Rincon Hill that enjoy sustainability. SF is sorely lacking in this type of thing, especially after the unjust takeover of the Hayes Valley Farm for more ticky-tacky 1% housing. Perhaps with a priority for those in the affordable units. We simply have too many tall buildings in this area already.

“I would love to see a food forest here, for the new residents of Rincon Hill that enjoy sustainability. SF is sorely lacking in this type of thing, especially after the unjust takeover of the Hayes Valley Farm for more ticky-tacky 1% housing. Perhaps with a priority for those in the affordable units. We simply have too many tall buildings in this area already.”
Double Oy vey

Definitely the end of an era, but this space was more valuable for McD’s purposes back when it was a last outpost before going into the wilderness south. Happy Donuts is gone, and that was a kind of harbinger. By the same token I don’t think McD’s would ever give up the Haight space because it’s still such an iconic presence that I don’t see ever getting drowned out by its surroundings.

Hello anon. A food forest is the future of urban sustainability, a collective urban farm that grows naturally over time and allows participants (in this case, I think members of the neighboring affordable units planned near Folsom should have priority over the luxury buyers) to pick food for their tables at their leisure. This is copied from the website of Beacon Food Forest in Seattle that should give you a better idea:
“The goal of the Beacon Food Forest is to design, plant and grow an edible urban forest garden that inspires our community to gather together, grow our own food and rehabilitate our local ecosystem.
Join us to improve public health by regenerating our public land into an edible forest ecosystem. We work to reduce agricultural climate impact, improve our local food security, provide educational opportunities, and celebrate growing food for the benefit of all species. ”
I would much rather see this, a benefit for REAL San Franciscans, than grotesque luxury housing for corporate techies. I think the area needs more green space and we have way too many tall structures. Look at the ugly monstrosity next to it…blech.

Hm, sounds like an environmental catastrophe, since it will cause more sprawl on the fringe. Better to grow food on farms, where the food can be transported in bulk, and allow people to live closer together rather than driving miles and miles every day.
Have there been actual environmental studies on this? Sounds very “feel good” though likely to have the exact opposite effect of its intended purpose in the real world – at least in terms of “reducing agricultural climate impact”.

Food forest?
Yeah, sure, that is a good use of valuable urban land. Far more efficient, both economically and ecologically, to grow food on actual farm land where economies of scale kick in. In my city, give me a park or housing, not a silly hippie “farm.”
Hayes Valley Farm made sense as a temporary project before they started building — alternative was to leave it unused and vacant. But it made no sense at all as a permanent, inefficient “farm.”

Do your research, Anon, Hayes Valley Farm was taken over for housing and there were protesters that were ignored. Would love to see this as a replacement farm.
If it can’t relate to farming, then a park would be nice. Just no more big buildings please! There are already a dozen skyscrapers under construction a block away, why on earth do we need more!

Hawkins, hayes valley farm was ALWAYS set up as an interim use project as those parcels had been designated for development (after the central freeway was torn down), but there was a few years of lag time before the development began.
It was not “taken over” for housing. Rather, a few nut jobs wanted to “take it over” as a permanent “farm.” Fortunately, the rule of law applies in this country.

But…but…if the Haight St. McDonald’s is closed, where will the homeless eat and congregate!?!?!?!?!
But seriously, for selfish reasons, I actually don’t want to see the Haight St. location closed. Not because I’m homeless, but because I actually park and buy food there, despite the clientele that one has to wade through.
No opinion on the SoMa location, since I don’t use it.

Then it should STAY 3 or 4 stories. Goodness. The anti-height brigade is out in full force…ignore the charm a neighborhood already has, it must be taller, taller, taller! There is no reason this parcel must go more than 3 stories if it indeed HAS to be developed.
The building in the photo looks a bit taller than 3/4 stories to me, however, thus belying your claim.

Fishchum – “boys” was a slur then as now – it has deep roots in the history of southern racism. and the scene setup with four black young adults terrorizing a cafe full of white people was a totally nasty stereotype, even then.
were you around in the 70’s? black-white tensions were very high in SF in those days. the SLA, Death Angels, San Quentin massacre, Panthers, etc. Eastwood et al. certainly knew that context, and they used it.
thanx, i confused it with “Do you feel lucky?” in Dirty Harry 10 years earlier. because that was another group of three young black adults terrorizing everyday citizens, with Eastwood delivering a catchy punch line to the sole survivor. funny about that pattern. but at that earlier time at least they had the restraint to use the generic “punk” epithet.

@Hawkins – I couldn’t tell if your first post was a joke or not considering what you had said on a previous post about saving artists in the Mission from the “techie scum”. But from your responses here it looks like you’re actaully serious and not just a troll. The info you provided about the project in Seattle contained one important detail you might have missed yourself. It was about using PUBLIC land for the farms, not private. Do you think it would be the best use of the City’s cash to buy this parcel from the owner at market price only to create a farm there? That’s just silly. It would be much cheaper just to buy the low income neighbors groceries for life.